


How to write the perfect letter

by Unfried_Mouth_Wheat



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula's gonna be out of character, Contemplating throwing in my favorite friendship of Azula and Jet, Drabble, Flowers, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Genuinely thought that this would involve more Azula and Zuko than Azula and Jet yet hERE WE ARE, I gottchu, If you want to read a fic with an actual plot, It's just Azula writing a letter to Zuko, Just flowers, OKAY THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SHORT FIC BUT I DON'T KNOW KNOW, Okay think of it like this, There's not a lot to this fic in retrospect, This isn't meant to be cannon compliment, Want to read a fic that is nothing but emotions and almost but not quite flowery language?, and the preparations that go into it, and you and I just need to except that, but I don't want any of the characters to feel out of character, but I'm not sure yet, please go elsewhere as I have nothing to offer you, short fic, we'll see how this turns out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25782622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unfried_Mouth_Wheat/pseuds/Unfried_Mouth_Wheat
Summary: Azula writes a letter to her older brother and thinks about how her friend is nothing like patterns
Relationships: Azula & Jet (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	How to write the perfect letter

Writing a letter seemed like a very simple task. At it's core, you were just painting down characters in a pattern. Azula had a mixed relationship with patterns. On one hand, they were predictable. They were familiar. Patterns didn't change if nothing provoked them to. On another, they were predictable. They were familiar. People followed them when they saw them. If one person betrayed you, the rest would follow as it was a pattern. She didn't care much for the outliers either, though. The ones who didn't follow any patterns were unpredictable and impossible to become familiar with. They were always shifting, changing. Azula grew up with order, yet these people didn't follow order. They followed something else, whether it be their hearts or their heads, it wasn't order.

Zuko had been like that. He didn't say things because they were the strategic things to say. He said what he felt. That had been his downfall as well as his rise to power. It had been a long time since she'd last spoken to her brother. She didn't plan on changing that anytime soon. Speaking would be a bit much right now, and even she knew that.

It was strange, the concept of something being far too much for her to handle. She had always been the one who could handle anything. She had to be. She was always the better one out of Ozai's two spawn. She was always the one to pick up her brother's slack. Now, her brother had seemingly grown up without her, becoming the Fire Lord while she threw a tantrum. It had been three years since that faithful day. She wasn't ready to face Zuko just yet, but she would be. Later. Later wasn't a bad thing. Later wasn't never.

Writing a letter turned out to be a lot more complicated than it looked. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised, considering that she had never needed to write one herself before, but still. Her first priority was paper. She didn't have a lot of it, considering that it wasn't a necessity in her or her friend's life. What a funny word that was. 

Friend. 

She had thought that Mai and Ty Lee were her friends. Maybe they were, once, but not in their latter years. She had controlled them. She knew that they would break out and act against her one day, but she hadn't thought that it would have come so soon. They had been more like her slaves. She chose not to think about it. Thinking back on her decisions hurt. What didn't hurt was thinking about her new friend. It was a strange feeling indeed, saying that word and not doubting it. Knowing that when she said it, it was true. Not having to lie. She wasn't quite sure how she had gotten so close with this boy. It didn't make much if any sense.

Two years ago, when they first had met, she had just escaped her cell. It was almost blurry. She remembered a lot of running. Soon enough, she had found herself at the harbor. Hijacking and controlling the navy ship was fairly easy. She hadn't been expecting her limbs to be so stiff, though. 

The last time she had been in the Earth Kingdom, she had been a conquer. Now, she was a fugitive. Oh how the tables had turned. A storm and a wreck later, and she was hiding out in some forest. She had just started a fire when she was jumped by her now friend.

Jet was his name. It wasn't his given name, but it was his real name.

Even now she was ashamed of having been captured by the non-bender. It was less now, but still present. She now knew that Jet was quite the force to be reckoned with, but at the time she had been fuming, perhaps even literally. That might have explained how he had acted, thinking back on it. She still didn't know how Jet had managed to restrain her. He didn't seem to have any supplies that were non flammable, yet he managed to do it. She vaguely recalled a seemingly never ending collection of buckets filled with water.

A sort of alliance was made between the two of them. Jet wanted revenge, and so did she. That didn't mean they didn't fight. They did the moment she was released. Somewhere along the way the line between making sure the other didn't die and genuinely caring for the other got very, very blurred. Pasts were somehow forced out of each other in the mists of bloodshed and screaming. Nothing in those days really made sense or stayed within her memory. She blamed the substantial lack of sleep that they both were battling along with each other. All she knew now was that it wasn't a lie when she called Jet her friend.

Said friend was currently asleep, dusty mop of hair dangerously close to her robes. She found that after two years of living with each other, she didn't mind as much as she could have. That being said, he was treading on very thin ice. It was moments like these that reminded her just how pattern-less Jet was. He didn't fear her like Mai and Ty Lee. She could try to predict his behavior, but she would almost always be wrong. Even after everything that had happened and how much she had changed, she still despised being wrong.

Her next priority was ink. That was a bit easier. Enough ash and a bit of water and you had ink. There was plenty ash around the small hut that they shared. She didn't know how Jet had convinced the village to let them stay, but he had. Even landed them jobs as well. Thankfully, it wasn't tea serving.

She had already made something to work as a brush. It obviously wouldn't be perfect, but nothing in her life had been as of late. Her Ostrich Horse had been kind enough to spare her a few feathers. She had tied them to a stick the other day. It would do, but quality would be up for debate. She would force herself to be fine with that. She took a deep breath, steeling her nerves for the first time in a while, before dipping her brush into the ink and starting to drag it across the precious piece of paper.

Writing the perfect letter would require a lot of pattern breaking on her half.


End file.
